Alpha Mechanics

Contents

Alpha Mechanics is a building tutorial area in Alpha World by the mad builder Bach Zhaa intended to demonstrate both basic building techniques as well as some of the advanced building mechanics and animations possible in Active Worlds.

History

Alpha Mechanics began as a community focused build yard with publically available areas as a response to the complexities of the new (and not so new) building techniques being introduced in Active Worlds and devoted primarily to Alpha World. It was intended to show, by example, through the builds of Bach and other builders, the codes and techniques for beginning through advanced builders.

Having allowed a handful of builders to take land and build representative example builds, Bach close the remaining plots only a few months after it opened, following the stressed advice of others about the dangers of vandalism. Alpha Mechanics then became Bach Zhaa's private build yard.

During the construction of the AM Media Library and Bach's attempt to centralize on-line TV, Radio and Movie channels, it became apparent, as a result of streaming media sources changing so often, that it was to prove impossible. Bach then left Alpha Mechanics following his newly created warp subway system for this first hiatus.

Bach returned to Alpha Mechanics following the opening of the New Alpha World ground zero and Bach's Alpha Mechanics inclusion in the teleport sites listed there, to continue to make it public worthy.

Bach's mover yard in Alpha Mechanics, as well as Bach's mover experimentations throughout Alpha World, unbeknownst to the majority of the community, led to the collapse of Alpha World during the week of Sept. 30 - Oct 5 2009¹. Although not a deliberate act, it was determined that the use of "non-alphanumeric characters in link commands" caused what appeared to be a corruption in the mover database. (Bach would frequently use names such as #1, or ^&^.) In an event he can only describe as an "Act of (AW) God", gold chat filled his chat window as soon as Alpha World re-opened and told him of these things and that these commands should be removed. Although no record of this message exists, he insists this was the reason over half of his movers were either deleted or updated on that day.

Bach updated and created a new teleport center In Nov. 2008, called Bach's Teleport Walk as a way to keep lag to a minimum yet providing both a sign and a picture of the teleport destination.